People of the Wolf (32 page)

The Other's face slackened peacefully, eyes staring into eternity. Singing Wolf stood on feeble legs and strode quickly

to the river, wading into the chilling water up to his knees. Waves lapped around him.

Laying the heart in the water, he watched it sink, saying softly, "Take him home, Sea Spirit. He died bravely."

He watched the heart blood swirl on the surface, mixing with the green of the water until it disappeared, then he reached up to clasp the leather over his own heart, holding it tightly as tears welled.

They headed north, driving down the Big River, pushing the Others before them. Raven Hunter swaggered arrogantly now, smiling his pride at those he felt deserved his approval, glowering at the cowards like Singing Wolf, who stumbled relentlessly behind, killing only to save his own life, pleading with the warriors to remember the ways of the People.

They camped one night in the bottoms, the ever-lengthening night making such camps necessary. At the same time, they had tired from the long trail. As night lengthened, none could forget the Long Dark that rested just over the eastern horizon. More and more, Singing Wolf looked back over his shoulder, to the south, longing for home.

This night they camped in a narrow cove of a valley, the shoulders of the hills rising to either side to provide shelter from the winds. Below them to the east, the Big River rumbled and roared, white water marking its path despite the darkness.

Singing Wolf—who no longer shared Raven Hunter's favor—built a small fire to one side, burning old leaves and dry dung as he dried willow twigs for a hotter fire later. Overhead, the Blessed Star People stared down at his tiny eye of fire. Soberly, he wondered what they thought—if they closed their eyes at the sight of the People and the trail of blood they left behind. He reflected on that as he looked around at the other small fires where men huddled laughing, gesturing in the flickering light as they told of their war triumphs.

"Why do you defy me?" Raven Hunter asked, coming to squat before Singing Wolf's fire. His vigorous young face caught the reflection of the flames, glowing eerily red as his black eyes probed Singing Wolf's.

"What have we become, Raven Hunter? I've seen you do things which will haunt my sleep forever. Bashing babies,

lancing old men and women to watch their guts roll out of their bodies. I've seen you reach, grab their intestines and pull while they shrieked. Why? What purpose does that serve?"

Raven Hunter nodded soberly, lines forming on his brow. "I understand your hesitation . . . and I truly feel disgusted at what I do. But there are so many Others. I have seen. Here." He pointed to his head. "I have seen." His earnest eyes studied Singing Wolf's. "Do you understand? Visions have come to me."

"No, I don't understand." Singing Wolf frowned, poking at the fire before him. "What use is torture? Atrocity, no matter how many—"

"If I make them fear, they'll leave us alone. That's why I leave their bodies looking so grotesque. If we chill their hearts, Singing Wolf, they'll avoid us, leave our land."

"There must be another way."

Raven Hunter settled himself, drawing his knees up to his chest. Sincerely he asked, "How? We have to kill these people, make them cry and scream . . ." He tapped his chest. "Here. It makes my very heart crawl and my soul shrieks in my dreams. These Others, they're not so different from us. They do many things the same way. But they've pushed us back, taken the sea, taken the grassy plains to the west, pushed us for generations until we've nothing left. You've heard the stories—about how once we had all the land west of the Ice Mountains. There was an abundance of game there. Our ancestors hunted all through that territory.

"And now? The farther south we go up the Big River, the drier the land is, the colder. You've seen that yourself. You've been farther south than any of the rest of us. From your own lips, you say the Big Ice narrows, blocks the Big River—the high mountains rise to the west. Endless ice to the east.''

"Yes ..."

Raven Hunter nodded sympathetically. "And what's left for us?"

"But to cause anything to suffer is—"

"Necessary." His face worked with the effort. "Consider. People make themselves share things. When you kill an animal, lance a mammoth in the gut and follow it for days, you feel its pain, don't you?"

Singing Wolf nodded. "Any hunter feels the pain of the animal he kills."

"That's our only weapon against the Others. Don't you see? Make them imagine themselves as the bloody corpses we leave on the ground. Make them see through our eyes. Make them feel that pain."

"Just as we feel it ourselves?" Singing Wolf considered.

"You're beginning to understand. When you look at an infant, its skull crushed, it twists your soul if you think your own child might look like that, doesn't it? Think what it does to theirs." The black eyes pinned him, the power of his certainty humming in the air.

"Your soul screams in your dreams?"

Raven Hunter's impassioned eyes didn't waver. "Their screams fill my sleep. It's . . . it's torture."

"Then why?" Singing Wolf demanded. "Why do you do it to yourself?"

Raven Hunter's eyes seemed to expand, his very soul exposed and twisting in the light of the low fire. "Because I love the People. I bear this burden, not because I want to be a monster . . . but to save the People. I have nothing more precious to give than myself."

The encompassing eyes seemed to suck him up—not the eyes of a monster, but of a man in hideous misery. Honest, open, Raven Hunter's soul pulsated.

A cold chill shook Singing Wolf. He looked around at the dark camp. Bodies wrapped in hides were only lumps in the crushed tussocks. Before him, the fire lay dead, a few tiny embers gleaming.

Raven Hunter put a hand on Singing Wolf's shoulder, patting softly. "War is hideous. But we
must
fight." He stood and stepped lightly over sleepers, going to his own robes.

Singing Wolf shook his head, staring off into the darkness.

Just after nightfall three days later, they peered through a series of jagged boulders at an unsuspecting camp of Others. Women roasted fish around a half-dozen low fires, laughing quietly, patting the children who played a game nearby. Men sat in a distant circle, talking in hushed tones, eyes vigilantly

scanning the growing darkness. Rapids on the river glimmered silver in the moonlight.

"Nock your darts," Raven Hunter instructed, and men rushed to comply.

Singing Wolf gripped his atlatl fiercely, one finger roaming the grooves along the shaft. He'd cut a line for each man that died, so that now his weapon undulated like the bones of the spine. Strikes Lightning had died first, a dart catching him in the leg, severing the big artery that ran along the thighbone. Singing Wolf hadn't been able to find it in his heart to weep. A day later, Two Darts was lanced in the gut. He failed slowly, an oozing pus forming in the wound to fever him. Carried by other young men, he babbled and died horribly amid fearful dreams. Moss Stalker, Loon Voice, Blows With Snow, and many others fell. Some perished in the heat of the fray, others later, from infected wounds.

Raven Hunter's stature grew, the young men listening care
fully, bowing to his expanding Power. Singing Wolf felt
haunted—a foreboding eating at him. Where was truth? The
memory of the pain and horror in Raven Hunter's eyes stayed
with him. The logic of the butchery had proved so right. At
one camp, they needed only to appear and the Others ran,
horrified, into the darkness. It worked, the terror of the Peo
ple proved as effective as their darts. '

I
should leave! Run home to Laughing Sunshine,
Singing Wolf told himself repeatedly. But some horrible fascination kept him there, watching as though his very life depended upon the outcome. He peered at the warriors crouching around him. A hardness lay in the eyes of the People that he'd never seen.

Something is happening to us. What? Life is changing. See the set of the young men's mouths? See the way they look over their shoulders, wary, lean, and dangerous. The women they take, they take by farce. They've grown brutal. Where is the laughter, the old humor we used to share?

"Ready?" Raven Hunter whispered eagerly. Nods went round through the boulders. "Now!"

At his command, men swept around the rocks, screaming viciously, striking down anyone they passed. Singing Wolf ran behind, weaving through the clashing crowd. A woman

scuttled from a lodge to his left. He gasped, recognizing his cousin who'd been abducted so many years ago.

"Blueberry? Blueberry!" he called, and lurched to block her flight.

Wide-eyed with fear, she huddled down before him, trembling as she cuddled her baby protectively. "Don't kill my baby," she pleaded. "He'll make you a good son. Don't—"

"I'm your cousin, Singing Wolf. Son of Two Stones and Brown Duck. Your cousin. Remember?"

She looked up, frightened, the baby, upset, attempting to nurse at the hides covering her breast.

"The People," she murmured, barely audible. He bent to hear her low-voiced words. "The People have come for me?" Swallowing hard, she burst into tears and threw an arm around his neck.

"Yes, we've come for you," he assured quietly, patting her back.

As the last of the Others ran from their village, he held her close, keeping her from harm as other young women were rounded up by hungry-eyed warriors. They would have many new brides in the camps this year.

Around the campfires that night, Raven Hunter cornered Blueberry, smiling warmly to ease her fears. "When were you captured?"

Blueberry looked at him askance, fear in her eyes. "It's been six Long Darks since I was taken. A young man-Sheep's Tail—caught me and my sister, Onion, digging roots. He made us go west. Onion ran once and he killed her with one long dart throw. I was scared. I didn't run."

Raven Hunter nodded thoughtfully. "Then you've been with the Others long enough to know them. Tell us about them. How powerful are they?"

"Powerful. They call themselves the Mammoth People, but they're like a single snowflake compared to the blizzard of the Glacier People."

Raven Hunter frowned. "The Glacier People? Who are they?"

"The Mammoth People are being pushed up from the south and the west by the Glacier People who follow the game. The animals are moving north because the land many days to the far west is hot, drying out, and they can no longer survive

there. Between the White Tusk Clan and the Glacier People are the Round Hoof Clan, the Buffalo Clan, and finally, the Tiger Belly Clan. The Tiger Belly Clan are the most honored. They fight to keep the western Enemy from crossing the narrows where the salt waters are less than five days' journey apart."

"How many Mammoth People are there?" Singing Wolf asked, leaning forward, anxious to hear from her own lips.

"Many," she whispered. "So many. More than I've ever seen."

Raven Hunter cast a glance over his shoulder to the somber faces of his warriors who listened intently, fear glistening in their eyes. He laughed boisterously. "Well, they'll turn around now! Some escaped us. They'll run to tell the other clans of the bravery and fierceness of the People!"

The youngest members of the war party insolently lifted their chins, chests puffed out as they stood around the fire.

Singing Wolf pursed his lips and stared at the ground. The young imbeciles, couldn't they see what was happening? If Blueberry was right, the Others might be under as much pressure as the People. "What are these Glacier People like?" he asked tiredly.

"They're white-skinned, covered with hair. The Mammoth People fought them. The stories are that they came from the western edge of the world. They're fierce, fierce as Grandfather White Bear. Maybe they're his human children. I don't know. But they live by the salt water far to the southwest. Stories are told of how they float on the salt water in man-made hollow logs."

"Hah!" Raven Hunter laughed sharply. "No man floats on water. Trees don't grow big enough to—"

"Not here," Blueberry interrupted with trepidation. "But I've seen trees so tall they touch the sky. Big and dark—like dwarf spruce—but a person can climb a hundred feet high in them. I've been west of these mountains"—she pointed over her shoulder—"and seen the tall mountains that run out into the south salt water. The trees there are so tall they poke the sky."

"Fantasy," Raven Hunter growled. "This woman is spirit-touched. Living too long among the Others has done things to her mind."

She lowered her eyes, mouth hard. One by one, the warriors walked away, laughing at the stories she told. White-skinned men? Covered with hair? Grandfather White Bear's kin after all! A good story.

Singing Wolf waited, seeing the shame in her face, until the other men sauntered away to their own fires. "I believe you," he said.